The Visone RV Boneyard

Driving into the Visone RV Boneyard, you can see all the RVs parked on the rolling hills.My mind has been totally blown by a visit to the Visone RV Boneyard. I guess I should explain. In London, Kentucky, lies one of the largest RV boneyards, if not THE largest east of the Mississippi. Not only can you go there and find spare parts in their warehouse, but you can also give them a list of needed parts and they will run out to the lots and try and find them for you.

Some of the RVs lined up on the Visone Lot.When we first drove in, we were shocked by the amount of RVs, specifically motorhomes, they had on their property. And then there was the damage. I’ve never seen so much shear damage around me. It was just completely mind-boggling, to see the condition some of the RVs here are in after experiencing fire or an accident.

A fire in a Monaco completely destroyed the entire driver’s side.The fire damaged ones, to my mind, were both the most impressive, and the most frightening. Fire is something that lays heavy on my mind sometimes. If a fire starts by the furnace or refrigerator, there isn’t much that can be done. You can do the safety-training stuff and aim the fire extinguisher, but there is a good chance that you will lose your RV. On the left is a Monaco coach after a fire in, I believe, the refrigerator area. The damage is extensive, and (as we discovered from talking to the guys here about the fire-damaged HR Scepter we were hoping to pull some cabinet doors from for a future project) the interior is nearly completely a loss. The featured image for this post is a close-up of some of the fiberglass damaged by the fire.

We were a little disappointed that we were not allowed to roam over the yards to seek out parts, but we understood why. A close friend had an accident out there, and their insurance company won’t allow them to let people roam at will anymore. But we were allowed to walk around some of the coaches in the yard, which was still exciting.

Down one of the aisle inside the Visone Warehouse.The warehouse is large and extensive. It contains nearly anything you could want for your coach, from cabinet fixtures to power inverters, to exterior covers. Some of the inventory is new, but mostly it is used parts pulled from the various coaches in the yard.

A visit to an RV boneyard has been something we’ve wanted to do since we started RVing, and Visone paid off in spades. Even though it’s a bit scary to see all the different ways our RV could, well, die, it’s still an amazing site to see all these RVs in one place.

We brought our purchases home and made our replacements. In addition to the door, we also bought several covers for our overhead florescent lights which had cracked, and therefore fell down at the slightest bump in the road. The new covers fit snug and don’t look to be going anywhere.

The hinge that broke on our OE door. Note the duct tape fix.Replacing the door was not an easy task. First we removed the old door (with the fridge off so it would not beep at us). With the door off, we removed the old, broken hinge. Then we striped the black trim off one side of the old door, and knocked the wooden panel out.

The new door on our kitchen table. Yes, we got thickburgers for lunch that day. 😉The panel is held in on the edges by runnels, but it is also glued on. At Visone they’d advised us that we could possibly encounter this, and they said to run a file underneath the panel to break the hold. We didn’t have a file, so we used brute, but gentle, force. We had the cuts of wood we’d used in the great cabinet lift of 2015 that we used to protect the wood as Richard hammered the panel out.

Together we slid the old panel onto the new door. That took some coordinated effort to jimmy properly in place.

Richard sitting before the door, preparing to do the replacement.Now we were ready to mount the new door. First we slid the new door into the upper hinge. Then I got down onto my back on the floor while Richard held the (now very heavy with the wooden panel) door in place. Seating the screws properly to attach the new door’s hinge to the bottom mount was difficult, but once they were properly in place with their washer, I was able to screw the new hinge bracket in place.

What an amazing day! We got a project accomplished and had our minds totally blown by the mass of all the RVs at Visone. Definitely a place worth seeing, but it is also a great online resource.